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- Otago Daily Times
A night down an imagined memory lane
The Church of St Mary and All Saints in Derbyshire is a typical example of medieval English ecclesiastical architecture — but for its curiously twisted spire.
Legend has it that Satan himself was soaring over Chesterfield, and feeling tired, landed upon the spire to rest his hairy wings. Perched there, he recoiled in horror upon seeing a virgin bride emerging from the church below. In his shock and incredibility, Old Nick twisted the spire before vanishing skyward, unable to abide such unexpected purity in the East Midlands.
A postcard displaying a photograph of this spire, emblazoned with the words "I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar", was my first introduction to Holly Redford Jones, a Manchester-based musician and comedian.
Originally from Chesterfield, Holly has decamped to Edinburgh for the month in order to perform a nightly "love letter to Sapphic institutions of a bygone era" — her contribution to this year's Fringe Festival.
I had no idea what to expect of Holly's show — in fact, I didn't even know I was attending until several hours beforehand, when my friend Dani, swayed by some rather persuasive Instagram advertisements, impulsively bought us tickets. I'm glad she did.
I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar is a cabaret-style concoction of comedy, music and queer storytelling, structured loosely around a set of curated songs and personal reflections. At its core, the show is a love letter to queer spaces of the past — the lesbian bars that once offered sanctuary and solidarity, now increasingly displaced by gentrification, commercial homogeneity and cultural amnesia.
I spoke with Holly a few days after the performance to explore the inspirations and influences behind her work. Describing herself as "a musician first and foremost", Holly's passion for music is evident throughout the show as she deftly switches from anecdote to history lesson to song.
But it was the pandemic, coupled with a bout of creative frustration and an encounter with a certain Netflix special, that nudged her towards comedy: "Watching Hannah Gadsby's Nanette was a turning point," she told me.
"It was the first time I felt really represented — it was so honest; so much of it resonated with me."
Fittingly, the show's title came from a pub gig: Holly had been performing covers in the same pub — the Bottle & Thyme in Chesterfield — for several years, when late one night, spurred on by a "let's see what happens" attitude, she decided to play Jonathan Richman's cult classic. The reaction surprised her.
"Much to my delight, people loved it. I found this inspiring in my hometown as it's not a particularly progressive place. Having people liking the song and requesting it felt very powerful, having grown up there and not being able to be openly LGBT."
And so, I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar became not just a staple in her setlist, but a point of reflection: why did this unapologetic celebration of queer spaces resonate so deeply, even in Chesterfield?
The Bongo Club, where Holly's show is staged under the auspices of the Underbelly entertainment company, is no lesbian institution. But, having frequented its sticky floors and smoky corners countless times during my undergraduate exchange in Edinburgh, I can vouch for its queer potential. It's no stretch to imagine it transformed, albeit briefly, into a lesbian bar of Holly's own making.
Holly is clear-eyed about the tensions that come with nostalgia, noting that cherished queer spaces have often been exclusionary.
"The hardest thing for me to write," she says, "was critiquing lesbian bars in the past as exclusionary spaces ... as a white performer, I might have gotten in but loads of people wouldn't."
Holly's show takes care to be trans-inclusive, though she admits that's not always easy in a room full of strangers: "People might take offence ... but it's also important to create a safe space ... even if it kills the mood."
At a time when trans people in Scotland and the UK more widely face relentless hostility and the systematic eradication of their rights, this commitment to trans inclusion is both politically necessary and emotionally generous.
One aspect of the show I particularly enjoyed was its rereading of cultural history through a Sapphic lens. I learned many new things — Dusty Springfield, for example, was a closeted lesbian. Who knew? (Apparently many people, but not me.)
Holly riffs on the irony of Dusty having had to croon numerous love songs to fictional men, and wonders aloud how many "difficult women" throughout history (think Virginia Woolf or Patricia Highsmith) were simply closeted and furious: "I wonder how much this was due to having to hide an integral part of themselves, having to constantly check themselves."
These reflections are never delivered as lectures, however, but are peppered between songs and comedic episodes.
I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar is also a deeply personal show, replete with anecdotes from Holly's life in Chesterfield, with its infamous "Big Tesco" and the council's hilarious, inscrutable embrace of the Crooked Spire motif — slapped indiscriminately on wheelie bins, vape shops and football stadiums.
The twisted spire appears throughout the show as a symbol of both local identity and accidental queerness. In our post-show conversation, Holly recalls a Facebook group for "mums of gay children of Chesterfield", in which one earnest mum (badly) photoshopped a rainbow erupting from the spire.
"They've gone too far," someone spluttered in the comment section. Holly grins when she tells me this: "I knew my show would upset men like that."
Growing up queer in a less-than-welcoming town, Holly found safety and identity through music.
"It's nice to have a thing you're good at if you're different in a small town like that," she says.
"Being good at guitar felt like a good identity — other than being different."
Although she originally planned on writing new music for the show, Holly found herself instead drawn to reinterpretation: "I was over-analysing the songs I was writing ... It felt more creative to take existing songs and think about how they could be reinterpreted."
From Dusty Springfield to Steps, the show's soundtrack is funny, eclectic and emotionally resonant. But this isn't musical comedy a la Tim Minchin or the Flight of the Conchords. The songs chosen — and Holly's rich, unshowy voice — complement the humour and personal reflections without veering into outright parody or pastiche.
Gerry Rafferty's Right Down the Line is Holly's favourite to perform: gentle, romantic, reimagined as a woman singing to a woman. A highlight for me is a raucous reworking of the Ghostbusters theme that now includes the line "Who you gonna call? LESBIANS!" chanted gleefully by the crowd.
Like Chesterfield's crooked spire, I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar is an idiosyncratic, irreverent and strangely beautiful show.
Holly's "lesbian bar" might not exist outside a few scattered hours in a dark, too-warm Edinburgh venue, but it's undeniably a real place, made of memories, humour, music and hope.
— Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
